Sunday we reported on an interview with an MSI manager, who stated that internal research had shown that the return rate for the Linux version of MSI's Wind netbook was four times as high as that of the Windows XP version. He claimed that the unfamiliarity of people with Linux was the culprit. This claim sparked some serious discussion around the net, but now MSI's statement is being repeated by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

"Or maybe it matters, and people didn't like it because linux is still too hard and/or unintuitive, even for experienced people?

And what do you base your claim on? How is pre-installed Linux hard or unintuitive? If Linux is preinstalled then you can bet that all your network cards/webcams/video card/suspend/sound works out of the box without a single line of configuration or any need to even know that there is a terminal. "

No, speaking from experience, I can state that there are Linux lap/desktops where all they did was take a distro, slap it on, and made sure it POSTed.

Wrong screen resolution, unsupported wireless cards, no drivers for the webcam, no graphics card acceleration, spotty sleep/suspend/hibernate, no speed step, coupled with tech support that has no knowledge of Linux.